Average GRE Scores At The Top Business Schools

Stanford Graduate School of Business is nowhere near the top when it comes to the number of students who are admitted with a GRE score — in fact, that percentage fell between 2015 and 2016, from 16% to 13%. But Stanford is once again the top school for average GRE scores, with an overall 329, edging out Yale School of Management by 1 point. Courtesy photo

Rest assured, I do not work for any MBA admissions consulting firm and have no intention of doing so. Some of these firms advertise on our site and, of course, we have the most complete directory of consultants and firms on our site. But I have never consulted. So perhaps someone is misrepresenting me. Name the firm and let’s put it out there!

As for the data, it all is self-reported by the schools to U.S. News which uses GRE data, just as it uses GMAT data, to rank MBA programs. That data is available to anyone if they pay for it because it’s behind a wall. Some schools, however, refuse to provide this data. In that case, we went to the schools and asked for the numbers.

Michael

John – Thank you for the reply. Just two notes:

1- My information regarding the consulting company is coming straight from an info meeting I had with one of their consultants in NYC while they were trying to pitch their services. They may be misrepresenting your name so I’d look into that. I may have misunderstood but the context was pretty clear and went something like: “how do we know the Yale and Stanford numbers are real from the 2016 P&Q post?” “Our director is also the director of Poets&Quants and maintains great relationships with the admissions folks at each school, so he called them up and they gave him the information.”

2- The data source link under the table leads us to the US News listing of “Best Undergraduate Business Programs.” In another one of the Poets and Quants posts, I believe it was mentioned that the schools are not yet reporting their GRE scores, as to not affect their rankings and leave them with some leeway to admit lower scoring candidates that they still want. Can you clarify?

First off, there is no director of Poets&Quants. I am the sole founder, owner and editor-in-chief of Poets&Quants. I do not do MBA admissions consulting. Never have and never will. The source for all the data in the article are the schools. They report this information to U.S. News as part of its annual MBA ranking. That is made clear in the source note on the tables. So if you have faith that the schools are honestly reporting this information, you can treat it seriously. You also should know that if U.S. News believes a school is misreporting data, the school would be removed from its ranking–a pretty severe penalty that could result in a great deal of disruption for a school.

Michael

I have to ask – Where are these figures coming from? Tuck ranked 8th on US News averaging a 320?

I know the Director of Poets & Quants is also the CEO of and MBA admissions consulting company, but what is the source of these figures? Are they coming directly from AdComs or are these just speculations? I ask because treating speculation as fact is a dangerous game that would impact a lot of MBA hopefuls. Please let us know how seriously we can treat this data.

hbsguru

dunno man, that is OK profile, and I do not think Stanford outcome is going to turn on GRE (ditto other M7 schools). I’d highlight Stat and Econ and any quant parts of your Ec Development job in some brief note explaining why low-ish Q score is not going to predict success at Stanford. That said, it is always hard to answer the question, duh, if you really, really want to go why not take GRE again and see what happens. If you have low GMAT or GRE, schools do kinda expect that you retake it once before going into EXPLAIN mode, something I can see. Not super clear in your case. On the other hand, you can only go to business school once, not true about taking GMAT/GRE.

Alfredo

Another quick thing – my GPA was a 3.80 which I noticed is above average for any M7. Not sure if that plays any role in combination with test scores, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to mention.

Alfredo

Thanks for the reply! To answer your questions – I hit most of the bonus points you outlined, but not all. I took Stats and several Econ classes in college and performed well in all of them. But my major was not quantitative by any means. Also, I’m a URM (Latino male) and coming from a relatively non-traditional background (TFA followed by international economic development). And on a related note, my assumption was that if my scores were good enough for Stanford, they’d be good enough for anywhere (including the other M7s that don’t report). Is that basically correct, or could my scores actually hurt more at other schools? If that’s the case, I’d probably want to retake, because I don’t exactly want to rest my M7 hopes on Stanford taking a chance on me!

OG

Thanks for weighing in! I’m in a similar situation – same verbal score. My quant is a few points higher than Alfredo but still relatively low compared to verbal.

hbsguru

grrrr. hard to say, to get one easy thing out of the way, have you taken Quant courses like Stats, Micro Econ, Calculus in college and gotten A’s? Just so we have some baseline ‘anchor’ that you can do the Quant work at Stanford. Also helps if your work has quant elements. Beyond that, it becomes a head game. Believe me, Stanford will take someone w. those very same GRE scores if they OTHERWISE super liked them. E.g. you are URM, or add some rare elements to the demo based on background, work, not being born on Earth but moving here at age 3 and learning how to breathe oxygen, etc. If you are instead fighting it out w. bankers, consultants and PE etc. white schmucks, etc. well, that little boo-boo could be an easy way for the Stanford Adcom to make a decision, they don’t really care who fills up the white, schmuck bucket, so why not go with stats as one strong filter. If they did that with you, it could be curtains. As to general question, do they just look at Total score vs. paying attention to the splits, well, once again, depends on what they want to do with you–if they want to ding you because are too vanilla for them, they will point to splits. If they want to take you, well they can point to total score and also chuckle that your admission will not cost them any “basis” points in the mag ratings. If you are white vanilla applicant, I’m not sure even getting all the GRE elements up to average would help. I’d be REAL interested in the number of vanilla bean admits (excluding guys who come fr. strong feeder firms that always place 6/7 applicants a year at Stanford etc, or have other connections, etc. ) present even AVERAGE stats. The vanilla beans is the cohort Stanford uses to get those high average scores in the first place.

Alfredo

FWIW, I should mention the Quant score was several points lower than my more recent practice tests (161-166). I’m sure the experimental section and early start time hurt me a little. So I’m confident I could go up on a retake. But my verbal and AW were pretty great this time, so who knows if they’d go down. Just want to make sure it’s worth it before moving forward.

Alfred

Looking at these stats and I have a question. I took the GRE recently and I’ve been debating whether to retake. I know the GMAT score is a composite of the Verbal and Quant sections, which are also scored individually. But I’m confused as to how much the composite matters for the GRE.

My overall score was a 327 (169V/158Q/6AW). This puts me within a 2 points of the Stanford average, or 1 point if you count AW. But my quant is significantly lower than their average. In this case, would my above average Verbal and AW scores (and nearly average overall score) keep me competitive for top schools, or would the low quant likely kill my chances?

I won’t go into my whole profile here, but based on my GPA, work experience, and extracurriculars, I should be competitive for M7 with a good application. Don’t want the GRE to kill my chances, but I also don’t want to waste time on more studying unnecessarily.